Social Media And Its Impact On Society

As we all know, social media has a tremendous impact on society and has affected in some way our daily life, relationships, and/or business. Every day, people around the world access famous social media network sites such as facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and so on to find out about other people, others might use social networking to reconnect with old friends, make new friends, or even meet their spouse. The excessive use of social media websites might bring negative effects; while for other people, it might bring satisfaction or positive effects. Technological advancements such as the internet, have given us the opportunity to connect with other people anytime and anywhere in the world. Pretty much all around the world, everyone has access to the World Wide Web via a desktop computer or smart phones. The fact is that no matter our current location or destination we might go, social media will always be following us as long as we have that direct connection. The main focus of this paper is to identify the good and bad of social media, and the current and future problems it will bring.

Social networking sites and social media have increased in popularity, at a global level in recent years. An example is Facebook, which is said to have more

In 2008 Joel Garreau conducted interviews and wrote a piece titled "Friends Indeed" for the Washington Post. Garreau brings up possible dangers, minor inconveniences, and what truly defines a friend in the new media world we live in. I felt Garreau came across as jaded by most of the interviews he conducted. He did not seem to speak with a wide array of people that gave positive impacts social media can have, but rather focused on the negatives of the subject. Garreau did bring up valid points, however, from personal safety to the aspect of different people in your life seeing your different personalities. For instance your Grandma that you go to church with on Sunday 's is now seeing the pictures of you partying with your friends on Saturday night.

While many people put off and ignore the issue of social media and its downfalls, others say that people should think about how our lives are being affected by this advancement in technology, including, lack of human contact and precious time being lost due to consumption with social media. Social media is currently a highly controversial topic in which numerous people have mixed feelings. Society has typically viewed new advancements in technology as beneficial and a sign of success within their country. But, has it solely caused successful outcomes, or are there downfalls to these advancements?

Today’s world is influenced by many factors. One of which is technology; many things have been created that have revolutionized society. Social Media is one of the newly invented platforms, which have come out as a result of technology. Social media is used on the web or via applications where users can view, share and learn about what others in their lives, communities and countries are doing. Social media has made communication very effective in today’s day and age and has helped many people in many ways; however, social media also has its downsides. Social media has made our lives less private and has allowed people to be able to find out confidential information about us. This topic is vital because all people using social media, from all different age groups, should be aware of the risks involved within social media because their privacy could be invaded by anyone. Social media can thus be seen as a threat as people can set out to harm you through invasion of your privacy. Social media is bad because it affects or privacy and communication skills.

Since we as a society are currently living in the age known as the Technological Revolution, chances are that in some form or fashion you are aware of and have been exposed to social media. Well, imagine a world where the use of social media became more structured and used to improve education as opposed to just being used for keeping in touch with friends and family, sharing pictures, and seeing how many likes you can get per post. According to the Business Insider Intelligence Report of 2014, social media is now the top Internet activity in the world, Americans’ specifically “spend more time on social media than any other major Internet activity, including email” (Business Insider). Considering this information, it is obvious that social media plays a vital role and impacts the lives of our nation on a daily basis. Some argue that its impact can be negative and a distraction to the educational experience of the younger generation. Regardless of your personal opinion, what if educators were to work with the use of social media for educational purposes. Since it is highly used, it would not only gain the learner’s interest but also would reach more people at large. Therefore, we should learn to better utilize social media in a more constructive educational manner.

Social media is defined as websites and applications (app) that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. (Google) Instagram, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Snapchat are just a few of the thousands of social media sites that are used all over the world. Social media are computer mediated technologies that uses Web 2.0 internet based applications that allow the creating and sharing of ideas, thoughts, information, and forms of expression. On these sites, users create personalized profiles for the app or website that are maintained by the organization that connects their social networks to other users within the same organization who usually have similar interests.

According to Simon Kemp, there are roughly 2.08 billion active social media accounts worldwide, which is “a 12% increase since last year” (Kemp). Social media has become an enormous part of everyday lives. It has been made so that everyone around the world can easily connect to one another- and almost instantly! Social media is a growing industry and has many positive and negative affects on those who use it.

With today’s advanced technology of the 21st century, we now have a wide range of access to information through social media. We can now stay updated with current topics and events going on around the world and become educated with just a click, or tap, to a social media application. Many people assume that social media are our friend and that social media is a great thing to have. But, what these people fail to realize is that social media is really our enemy, our foe. Where do I stand with social media? Let’s just say I used to be blinded as much as today’s people are, who are corrupted by the vast trends of social media. Though I may use social media myself, I do not consider it my friend. I consider social media a corruption towards society and a foe, not just towards me, but to the rest of the world.

Traditionally, people used the Internet to simply expend content: they read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services. Increasingly, however, people are now utilizing platforms–—such as content sharing sites, blogs, social networking, and wikis–—to create, modify, share, and discuss Internet content. This represents the social media phenomenon, which can now significantly impact how an entire movement is viewed worldwide. It’s difficult to comprehend in this day and age that social media could actually produce something positive and worthwhile, considering so much of the discussions are filled with arguments revolving around race relations, political ideologies, and violence. The social media phenomenon has people “plugged in” to twitter wars between celebrities, the latest political sound bites, and hashtags to use against one another (i.e #BlackLivesMatter vs. #PoliceLivesMatter). Yet, through the issues, there are social media platforms that promote positive expressiveness of one’s self worth and love. In relation to the body, the hashtag #EffYourBeautyStandards has created its own phenomenon within the realm of the internet. In times of body shaming, scrutiny, and being judged based off of a size on the back of a tag, or the color of your skin, or the lack of makeup one refuses to where, this hashtag promotes beauty acceptances and embraces the differences of every person.

The amount of users in social media has increased in numbers over the years. The use of social media has been used throughout different industries including collegiate sports. Over the years it has been seen to increase fan support and interactions, increase the numbers in ticket sales and help with recruiting. Social media has even posed as a danger into hurting a brand throughout recent events.

Selfie is defined as a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media. Selfie was the 2013 Oxford Dictionaries word of the year and have great impacts on social media websites across the internet. To this day the world has been caught in this tendency by mocking it or participating it. As selfies get more popular the beauty standard are impossible to reach for ordinary young women. Every individual have different perspective of what self-portrait present. In fact, based on my own experience and the experience of classmate, I cannot deny the boost in confidence level that selfies bring. People, who were often unexpressive and distrustful of their own positive trait in the real world, often finds their worth through selfies.

The term ‘social media’ has become a broad-term to describe a large number of online systems that serve as a platform for the generation, and distribution of user-generated content. Social media creates a virtual social space, where a large number of users come together and interact with one another. These interactions can be either structured, such as responses that are moderated on blogs, semi-structured, such as a discussion between an extended network on Facebook, or unstructured, such as the anarchial functioning of Twitter.

It is clear that in the modern world, social media plays a pivotal role in communication amongst humanity. Social media serves a variety of purposes ranging from personal settings like keeping in touch with friends through Facebook and Twitter, as well as business environments through the use of LinkedIn. It has been proven in many scientific studies that among human’s basic needs is the necessity for a social connection with other human beings. Well, in the 21st century we have seen this need become very easy to attain through the introduction of social media. Social media has enabled humans to communicate in an advanced way just by using their fingertips. Although, social media is generally regarded as a positive device for humanity, it has sparked great controversy in its impact toward generating addictive and anti-social qualities within individuals. Americans should limit the time they spend on social media because it often causes rampant addiction that may result in mental disorders such as anxiety and depression that can lead to poor life decisions prompted by habitual anti-social behaviors.

Social Media is an interaction between people where they create, share or an express their ideas and thoughts. It has also been defined as a group of web based applications which help in growing up the technological foundation of the internet. Social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Google plus, BlogSpot, Youtube, Myspace and Wikipedia, and numerous additional technologies which can be considered as social media are changing the way of communication among the people across the globe. Some of the popular content sharing websites like YouTube, face book and Twitter have an option of upload, tag and comment for the users on different categories of content (Photos, Videos or Bookmarks). Human experiencing a vital part of interaction online through expansion of social media. Twitter has been a global communication tool in 2009 "Iranian Presidential Election